Opening song from the vastly under-rated Top Secret.
Deja Vu went on to play Mr. Carson in Downton Abbey.
100th Post Palate Cleanser – Top Secret
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The Den (2013)
This movie was a complete surprise.
The only thing I knew about it was that I saw a 2-star review at another site this morning (which I did not read). It was already in my NetFlix queue, though, so I gave it a chance — and it’s pretty great! I get that out of the way up front, because there are some caveats.
Caveat # 1: A couple of times it crossed the line for me into Megan is Missing territory where it became a little too real to be fun. But your mileage may vary.
Melanie Papalia as Liz Benton has copped the greatest gig in the world. She has actually gotten a university grant to surf the web all day. I don’t get offers that good in my spam. She is using a Chatroulette type program called The Den to talk to people all over the world who want to see her boobs.
Pretty quickly her computer is hacked. It turns itself on, and The Den feed gives her some disturbing audio. After a non-nonsensical scene where her boyfriend throws a scare into her, the hacker turns on her webcam and records them making out. This results in the board pulling her grant, even although I suspect the vote was not unanimous.
After a few random chats with pervs, an Aussie, a Nigerian Prince scammer, etc, she sees a woman bound and gagged, who is thrown against a table and has her neck sliced open. From there, things go badly for Liz in ways that I will not detail. As always, the less known, the better. This film actually got 3 or 4 verbal oh-shits from me, which is extremely rare.
Caveat #2: You’re going to be reminded of a lot of other movies. My theory is that originality is over-rated, so it didn’t really bother me. Yes, what they have created here uses some familiar building blocks, but how they put them to together is better than 90% of the crap in this genre. I’m sure there are many more examples, but off the top of my head, all of these are represented here: Megan is Missing, Hostel, Saw, V/H/S, Devils Due, The Strangers.
My well-reasoned argument is, “so what”. I came to be entertained and they delivered.
Watching cable news when I was younger and more stupider prepared me for this.
Night Gallery – Escape Route (S1P3)
OK, Rod. We gets it — Nazis is bad. In Twilight Zone, we got it in Death’s Head Revisited and He’s Alive. Six years later, we’re still getting it. Not to diminish the Holocaust, but we’re just trying to have some fun here. After episodes in the pilot about a haunted painting and a crabby old woman, this is what we get? Just a little too real.
Richard Kiley is a former Nazi living in South America. At a museum, an Auschwitz survivor is looking at a painting of a crucifixion. He had a friend who died that way in one of the camps. He believes he recognizes Kiley as a guard from the camp. Kiley denies it to the old man — ironic because he had only ducked into the museum to evade Israeli agents. While there, he becomes entranced by a idyllic painting of a man in a rowboat. As he gazes at the painting, he imagines himself in that serene place. He is so captivated that at closing time, a guard must ask him to leave.
The next morning, even before the museum is open, he rushes back to see the painting. Again he gazes longingly at the painting.
That night, through the thin walls of his apartment, he talks to neighbor Gretchen. He tells her of the painting and his imaging being the man in the boat. That must have gotten her attention.
“Yeah, yeah but let’s get back to that man in the boat.”
She knows his true identity. He tells her he believes he could have willed himself into the picture. She tells him he has neither soul nor conscience. Worst hooker ever.
He returns to the museum and sees the old man again. This time the old man accuses him of being a guard in the camp, and calls him by his true name. Kiley continues his denials, but after the old man leaves, he tries again to insert himself into the painting. For a few moments he actually succeeds, seeing himself in the picture, the surface rippling. The he is in the picture, feeling the water, able to look the other way, out of the picture and into the museum. .
After the museum closes, he goes to a bar where they are singing the Frito Bandito song. He coolly maintains his cover by drunkenly breaking into Deutshland uber Alles. Again, he crosses paths with the old man. He kills the old man then goes on the run.
The agents find him at a bus station and he takes off. After an escape sequence which features a few ill-advised freeze-frames, he sneaks back into the museum.
He kneels before the painting and begs God to put him into picture. In the dark gallery, he does not see that the painting of the lake is gone, having been replaced by the painting of the crucifixion. He gets his wish. D’oh!
The pilot had three solid episodes. An effort was even made to have the stories involve the paintings in the gallery, although the relevance in the 2nd story was a little thin. Whether the pilot sold the series, or if it was a done deal, it was a high point that Night Gallery would not achieve very often in its run.
Post-Post:
- Not to be confused with Escape Clause.
- Rod Serling was a paratrooper in WWII.
- Richard Kiley was the park narrator in Jurassic Park. They spared no expense.
Gingerdead Man 3 (2011)
20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong. Part XIII.
To be fair, I did not see the original Gingerdead Man. I also have not seen Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust. However, I propose a new Oscar category for Best Title to properly recognize that film’s achievement in motion picture arts & sciences. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, you had a good run.
The most shocking thing about this movie is that I didn’t hate it. In fact, for the first 10 minutes, it was pretty great. It starts out with a fun spoof of Silence of the Lambs. Clarissa Darling has come to see the Gingerdead Man at the Institute for the Study of Homicidal Baked Goods. After being taunted by a murderous baguette, pie, brownie and bagel, she reaches the glass cell of Gingerdead Man. He is manacled to the wall, wearing a Hannibal Lector face-mask.
As she is interrogating him, the Institute is overrun by animal rights activists who seek to free the prisoners. One of them, believing Gingerdead Man to be a shaved Capuchin monkey, sets him free. Making his escape, he ducks into a door labeled Time Travel Studies (as all cutting edge physics is done on prison grounds). After killing the 2 scientists who have discovered the secret to time travel, he uses their invention to escape back to 1976.
Unfortunately, being a low-budget film, we are stuck with a lot of generic, stock disco music. And we get a LOT of it. Just a little dose of Night Fever or Stayin’ Alive would have helped immensely. If they made a star of John Travolta, they can do anything. One bit that gets used several times sounds like the opening to Carwash only to cruelly dash our hopes for a tune each time.
Having dispensed with the Silence of the Lambs portion of our program, we now move into the Carrie phase. Skateland owner Trixie announces that the disco will close due to back-taxes. She introduces her shy niece Cherry Wright who is movie-ugly (i.e. hair is in face). When someone shouts “nerd” she shorts out a few lights. There is also a girl with a red baseball cap in case we don’t get the Carrie whole homage. Sadly, the red hat homage was chosen over the equally iconic foggy, slo-mo high school locker room scene.
Expect a lot of this.
Three of the girls put on a car wash to save Trixie’s. They even have a giant professionally-made color banner promoting the car wash despite the fact they only heard of Trixie’s tax problem 10 minutes ago. Seeing the bikini babes, Gingerbread Man is feeling his oats, so hooks their hose up to a conveniently placed barrel of hydrochloric acid. They melt down like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Meanwhile, Cherry is going against her aunt’s wishes and skating with the guy who fumigates the rental skates; the guy who cleans the toilets apparently being out of her league. Some of the other girls give her a makeover and decide to get her elected Roller Boogie Queen.
We take a brief side-trip into Porky’s for a take off on the scene of Balbricker with the tallywacker. Which sounds funnier than it is.
Jacqui Holland
Gingerdead Man then offs 3 more people in a storage room using a nail gun that fires CGI nails like an Uzi. As the girl to the right is is one of the victims, Gingerdead Man has squandered a considerable amount of goodwill from me.
The movie follows the Carrie template with the pig’s blood and subsequent murder of just about everyone in the disco. These scenes are kind of fun even though most of the people seem oblivious to the lightning bolt mass murders happening 10 feet from them.
A couple of kids who had made off with Gingerbread Man’s time travel device earlier now reappear for the Bill & Ted segment. They have rounded up Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson, Lizzie Borden and Jeffrey Dahmer because it takes 4 people to subdue an 18-inch killer made out of cake. I don’t recall any of them being known for the physical prowess. In fact, I’m not sure 2 of them ever personally killed anyone.
They get Gingerdead Man stuffed back in the cookie jar — no, literally — that was the big plan. The time-traveling kids send him back to the future, resurrect the dead disco crowd, and have the good sense to sneak a peek at a lottery drawing to win a million bucks. HELLO, MCFLY!!!!
Would I recommend? The banal music really does drag it down, and each scene is follow by an increasingly tiresome footage of the skaters. I could see it being fun with a group enjoying adult beverages or state-approved medicinal ganj.
Post-Post:
- Trixie is a man, man!
- Actress Junie Hoang sued IMDb for publishing her real age. See also, Streisand Effect.
Why isn’t this woman a star?
Tales from the Crypt – Til Death (S2E4)
a/k/a the one where they just gave up.
Well this was a let down. After three very good 2nd season episodes, TFTC finally had a bomb. I had my doubts when I didn’t recognize any of the cast. After the first 3 episodes featured the likes of Demi Moore, Kelly Preston and Lance Henricksen, this seemed like the JV team. Although, to be fair, a couple of them have huge resumes — just almost nothing I’ve ever seen.
Behind the scenes, this is Chris Walas’ only TV directing credit. Writer Jeri Barchilon is the veteran with 2 TV credits, the other one being an episode of The Facts of Life. Not even a “very special” episode.
The episode begins with voodoo priestess Psyche placing a blood splattered portrait of Logan Andrews on a fire. The episode is so poorly constructed that it is not clear that this is a flash-forward; not even when the corresponding scene comes around.
Cut to Andrews yukking it up with his doctor pal over an unfortunate “widow Fitzgerald” who dies leaving him some valuable land. Who is Mrs. Fitzgerald? Why did she leave Andrews the valuable land? We will never find out. For that matter, who is Andrews? Playboy? Is he rich? Overextended? Scam artist? All we know for sure is he buys his clothes a size too large.
Andrews sets eyes on the beautiful Margaret Richardson and we suspect the cycle is about to repeat (even though we don’t know what the cycle is). She is supposed to be a very classy snob, rudely criticizing everything and everyone. Why did she come here if she hates it so much? No help on that one from the writer.
Unfortunately this role, like Andrews, was either terribly miscast or terribly directed. Pamela Gein gives it a good try, but just is not able to pull the humor or snideness out of the character. She looks nice and she’s given some good barbs, but it just doesn’t work. And her hair! My God, her hair! That net makes it look like a beaver tail.
The foreman comes to get Andrews to show him that the land he inherited is quicksand, unsuitable for building. And when I say foreman, I mean foreman in the sense that Cleavon Little was a foreman in Blazing Saddles. So Andrews turns his eye to Margaret.
Really, this whole story was written in the title. “Til Death” indicates a marriage or hook-up will occur. Given the genre, you know there will be a literal death involved. And being Tales from the Crypt, you know the living person will be stuck with the dead person for ever after.
But originality is over-rated. Just having a good setting and interesting characters can make an episode. The voodoo setting works, but might be a little too politically incorrect for some squeamish viewers. Sadly, of the 3 leads, only the doctor really makes his character work.
To end on a positive note, the effects of Margaret decomposing are very well done. That might because most of the director’s credits are in make-up and special effects. He is not credited on this episode, but did get a make-up credit in The Switch.
I rate this one “mostly dead”.
Post-Post:
- OK, so Andrews is saddled with this decaying zombie forever in order to fulfill some cosmic justice or irony or karma for his sins. But no one in these tales ever thinks about the zombie. She seems pretty OK with it at the moment, but she is facing eternity as a rotting corpse.
- Throughout the entire episode, D.W. Moffett reminded me of Angel or that guy on Warehouse 13. Except like he’s the guy if you can’t afford the other two. Despite having just seen him in an Outer Limits, I had no memory of him at all. He’s very successful, though, so maybe it’s just me.
- In re the doctor’s head: 1) why did Maggie cut it off? 2) why is Psyche carrying it around in a cage? 3) Why is he so chirpy about it?